![Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company Presents A Free Virtual Series: "Visions from the Bridge"](https://www.newjerseystage.com/events2020/Nai-Dec4.jpg "Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company Presents A Free Virtual Series: "Visions from the Bridge"")
(FORT LEE, NJ) -- The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, with an aim to bring respect and diversity to dance through its regular online offerings, is extending their program to include a curated video series presentation, Visions From the Bridge. Visions aims to bring together master dancers, choreographers, and directors to meet audiences worldwide online and share their creative and artistic journey in the context of their work. Visions will feature film/video of master teachers and choreographers of color whose practices are embedded in the community and are focused on advancing the art of dance that transforms the personal, environmental and metaphysical spaces.
Visions will open on Saturday, December 5, 2020 at 8:00pm EST with one of Nai-Ni Chen's most spectacular works, Unbroken Thread. The net, a knot and a noose are places where the web of fate is drawn tighter. They evoke the mysteries of binding and loosening, fate and freewill, suffering and transformation. Created with the original music of Jason Kao Hwang, set design by Myung Hee Cho with assistance from Mikiko Suzuki, and costumed by Karen Young, Unbroken Thread (2003) toured internationally sponsored by the President Committee for the Arts.
Audience must register to join Visions on the Company website at www.nainichen.org/visions.
Visions will be hosted and moderated by dancer/choreographer Andrew Pacho whose extensive dance careers included working with Mark Morris, Donald Byrd, Philodanco, Doug Elkins, Lar Lubovitch, Micheal Swain, Graciella Daniele, Bill Irwin, Gillian Lynne, Peter Sellars, Graham Murphy, Harold Prince, Jerry Mitchel, Robert Lepage as well as several productions on Broadway, Metropolitan Opera, NYCO, Radio City Music Hall. The moderator will be hosting a panel with dancers: Kelly Hamlin, Heather MacNeill and Teri Miller Buschman; composer Jason Kao Hwang and Choreographer/Artistic Director Nai-Ni Chen.
Bringing the dynamic freedom of American modern dance together with the elegant splendor of Asian art, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company is one of the most visible Asian American dance companies in the United States. Ms. Chen's unique choreography transports audiences beyond cultural boundaries to the common ground between tradition and innovation, discipline and freedom, and form and spirit.
Since its inception in 1988, the company has earned a broad base of public support and has toured extensively to major performing arts centers throughout more than thirty states. Presented by some of the most prestigious concert halls in the United States, from the Joyce Theater in New York to the Ordway Center in Minnesota and the Cerritos Center in California, the Company has mounted more than twenty national tours and nine tours abroad. Ms. Chen's work has been presented by such acclaimed international festivals as the Silesian International Contemporary Dance Festival and the Konfrontations International Dance Festival, both in Poland, the Chang Mu International Arts Festival in Korea and the Meet in Beijing International Arts Festival. The Company was also honored by a distinctive grant award from both the President's Committee on Arts and Humanities and the Department of State to represent the United States in a seven-city tour arranged by the Tamaulipas International Arts Festival in Mexico. Also, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company has the unique honor of having received more than fifteen awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and numerous Citations of Excellence and grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
In addition to its extensive season of touring and performing, the company has developed Arts in Education residency programs in school districts to bring culture and arts into educational settings. It's colorful and engaging in-school assembly program "The Art of Chinese Dance" has been presented in hundreds of schools in NJ, NY, CT and PA, reaching hundreds of thousands of youth. The Company is currently in-residence at New Jersey City University and assisting NJCU in the development of a new BFA in Dance.
